A beam of radiant sun peeped through the windows of the Borden Town Library, and slid across the white hood of a Ford "Escape" parked, tranquil and still, the only car in the empty parking lot. Inkspots34 read the New Jersey license plate, a Recycle sticker pasted to the back window of the Mocha vehicle. A book lay upon the knees of the sleeping driver, his chin resting on his chest, his glasses tucked in his front pocket.
It was early in the morning, the birds had just started their many-tuned chorus amid the blooming cherry trees and the old brick buildings. The Library wasn't open yet, not for another half an hour, and yet still that car sat parked, alone.
Michael Sterling shifted slightly feeling the book slide off his knees and hit the side of the door, but he didn't open his eyes. He tried not to think about how much his back hurt as he wavered between that pleasant world of sleep and wakefulness.
Another five minutes passed, he was managing to doze off again drifting into a feathery landscape. When a hard rap clacked against the window and startled him awake. He blinked a few times and pulled himself up in his seat. Robin Squire grinned at him through the car window.
"You were actually telling the truth when you told me that you didn't have a life!" she laughed her voice muffled slightly by the glass. He retrieved his horn-rimmed glasses from his front pocket and slid them on, carefully unlocking the doors as she disappeared behind the car. A moment later the passenger's side door opened and she climbed in sighing as though she had just run a mile.
"What are you doing here so early?" he managed sleepily, pinching himself awake with one hand while he leaned down to fish for his fallen book.
Robin took a deep breath, "I would ask the same to you. I have good reason, and I'm only twelve minutes and thirty five seconds early to be just about accurate." She said adjusting her gold watch.
Michael straitened his glasses and placed the book on his lap carefully. "Well your usually just on time." He says seriously, still trying to kick his brain back into gear. "I'm sorry I didn't hear your car pull up, that's all."
Robin brushed a few silver cat hairs off her black coat, and held up a finger. "Hang on… I haven't gotten to that part yet. I got up this morning ate breakfast, got into the car and the thing wouldn't start. I literally rode my bike just to get here today. Literally… I must look awful, do I seem presentable to you? Some inconsiderate teenager hit the brakes on a corner and splattered mud all down my front." She mumbled leaning down and rubbing some of the caked dirt off her corduroys
Michael gave her a sidelong look adjusting his glasses in a self conscious way. "Um I didn't even notice." he confessed hoping that was the right thing to say. "You could have called Maria. Maybe she could have picked you up."
Robin swallowed sighing again. "She has the flu. It took me an hour just to ride out here… I'm glad no one ran me over." She slapped the dashboard hard shaking her head, her dark chocolate hair looking quite windswept. "Your driving me home…"
"If you say so."
"How long have you been here? You look like you didn't get sleep all night." She commented stifling a yawn.
"I didn't." He answered hoarsely smoothing back one strand of deep hazel hair, seeming less than alert. "My mom's house finally sold, and like I said last week, she's staying with me for a time. She's complaining about there being that antique shop downstairs. She hates the customers coming and going. We had a huge fight about it from twelve to four in the morning. Eleanor was sick all last night we had to take her to the vet, and then to top everything off, we argued about that too. I had to get away."
"You've been here since four?"
"Since four thirty-seven to be, as you say, accurate." He closed his gray eyes again, hearing the gently rumble of a nearing care engine. "That would be Jonathan." He added, not bothering to look up.
"It is! How did you know?" Robin exclaimed peering out the side window at the approaching car.
"Supreme guesswork. Jonathan always shows up at this time." He manages a weak laugh, feeling as though he would like nothing better than to just catch a few more minutes of sleep before they opened up.
"Yep, he's got the keys, we should probably go. We have a delivery coming in today, luckily all the books are brand-new or just about, all you have to do is log them. No restoring or cutting off pieces of gum."
"A delivery?" That word seemed to trigger a migraine, a sharp pain shot through his brain at the mere sound of it. "Of course a delivery is coming today… it's coming because I was up all night. That's what deliveries usually do."
The beginnings of the morning started much as usual, they unlocked the back rooms and flicked light switches to illuminate reading tables and so forth. Robin jogged off immediately to start of the computers. It was early yet; the "Printing Pen's" writing group wasn't due for another hour. The steady flow of customers wasn't expected until eleven at least. In the mean time the arrival of the rest of the library staff was casual, most dragging their feet through the doors, Dunkin Donuts Styrofoam coffee mugs clasped in their hands.
Michael cleared his back desk turning on the old fashion radio just beneath it, the faint pulse of classical symphony drifting from just out of sight. He sighed and stifled a yawn.
"That's a bit early for the delivery truck…" Robin said quietly a few moments later, still bent over the logs for that week.
"Excuse me?" Michael asked sleepily rubbing one eye.
"The delivery truck left the boxes in the back."
"Already?" It was far too soon for him. He wasn't even sure if he was awake yet.
"Like I said, its just logging, you already freaked out over isles four and five non-fiction. Those were the only books that were in need of repair."
He grumbles slightly. "Until tomorrow when those darn kids will waltz in chomping gum, and yakking on their cell phones, they'll just rip the books down by their spines."
Robin handed him over the logs. "The only books we ordered three of were That new collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories and the that new book by Lincoln Child. Given them to me when your finished putting the covers on, I'll record them into the computer."
"Right." Michael said in a slightly annoyed tone. "I'll do that." He got up without another word retreating into the back room and shifting through some of the newer boxes. He spotted the one set to the side and deduced that it was the more recent of them. It wasn't particularly heavy, to his relief, and he carried it with little effort back to his desk.
He was disturbed to see the packaging didn't include more bubble wrap. As he stacked the books one by one off to the side, checking off titles on the list. When he got to the end, and all the logged books were officially laid, ready for processing, before him. He got up to bring the empty box back to recycling.
Something caught his eye and stopped him dead however. Something so atrocious a victim of abuse, he felt his breath catch in his lungs. Its dark tattered form lay abandoned disregarded, not packaged not wrapped, thrown worthless at the bottom of the box.
"What's the matter? You look like you've seen a ghost." Robin asked as she walked by a stack of books on her trolley, a pen tucked behind her ear, some residual mud still smeared across her front.
"A Monstrosity!" He managed in a small voice, because it felt as though his throat had closed from shock.
"A What?"
"How could anyone be so cruel. how could anyone care so little.. How could anyone do something like this?" He no longer felt asleep any more, any thought of sleep was pushed from his mind completely.
Robin blinked a few times. "I am sorry but you've lost me. Is there something wrong with the box? Or did one of the books have a fingerprint on it."
"Hardly." Michael manages reaching down into the box his fingers closing on small dark book; it was warm to the touch as though someone has just brought it in from the sun. "What would you call this?" He says raising it slowly, the horror evident in his expression.
As the book left the shadows of the box it seemed to morph and twist into something even more hideous, its front cover was warped and bent, slashed, and torn, its spine was nearly rent in two. The page edges were singed, or so it looked, and large gaping gaps revealed where pages had been torn out.
Robin went pale, not at the shape of the book but at the look on his face, she had seen that look before, just once. Only this time his anger actually seemed to over shadow, even that.
"This. is.an. OUTRAGE!" he roared and any conversation in the library between any of the staff went completely silent, because Michael never yelled.
"W-was that in the box?" Robin asked in a small voice.
"Of COURSE it was in the box! It wouldn't have been from my desk, I would not TOLERATE it!"
"That wasn't on the list..."
"I SHOULD THINK NOT!"
"Michael, please just relax someone probably just threw their old journal in there to get rid of it, just throw it away if it upsets you."
Michael took a long heaving breath swelling to his full height "This book has been stabbed, beaten, torn, ripped, drowned and abused. I HARDY think the way to handle this situation is to ship it off to a dump, where it will lie in piles of broken fan pieces and soda cans, a shame to it's kind!"
"Honestly, your over reacting."
Michael then did not say another word to her, he simply waved her off with his hand and pushed the new books out of his way, opening his desk drawer and pulling out his tools.
"You can't be serious about fixing that piece of junk?" she said after a moment or so, "Even I recognize a lost cause, Michael."
But he seemed not to hear her, he laid the book out as though it was a delicate rose about to be pressed. He traced his fingers over its beaten cover, his gray eyes narrowed with intention, and very steadily, as the spine creaked loudly on its rust binding, he opened it to its first blank page.
"It's Blank."
That was the first thing Michael said which was evident even before he hand flipped through the first half of the book.
"Oh Golly." Robin sighed with exasperation. "Did I not explain to you that it was just a piece of junk?"
Michael's dull grey eyes swept the empty pages running his fingers over their parched surface as though he hoped to summon up the words from deep withing the page. "It's a book. Someone has to have written something in it."
"Well, I don't see anything. Like I said it's probably just a journal I have four of them at home and none of them are even touched. I'm not the journal keeping kinda gal."
Robin could tell Michael wasn't listening to her. She sighed sliding off into some near isles to begin her task of replenishing the shelves.
The classical music wafted out from just under Michael's desk in a forlorn way a requiem, almost, for this lost and empty book.
Michael was utterly distressed. What was the purpose of tearing apart a perfectly good book if it was empty. Whatever had the book once held that was such a blaspheme to the people who had read it. The small bound journal hardly seemed like anything worth mentioning now. Just a battered relic of some former time. He relented his gentle handling and closed the book rather hard glaring at it's cover. Maybe Robin was right. Maybe it was some journal hardly worth a few cents now, in its condition.
Still, one might have wondered why someone would have gone through such a means to hide it among the boxes due to be delivered to the library. No one could have mistaken it as one of the pristine new arrivals. The longer he stares at the book the worse he felt, the more annoyed at himself he became. Why was this book in the box?
He frowned opening the book to it's last page there was the only mark, or so it seemed visible. He bent nearer it was so smudged it looked almost like a stain. He could hardly make out the tiny letters he had to spin the book in several different angles to finally get the full word, which sounded more like the title. "The Principium" he whispered after finally attaining the name.
"Is that Latin?"
Michael jumped. Robin had returned, paperbacks held in her right hand, her expression serious as she bent over him, peering down at the faded lettering.
Michael sighed glancing up at her, then back down at the deteriorated book.. "Yes, it is Latin. It means "Beginning."
"Beginning?" Robin inquired biting her lip and straitening. "Do you think someone just scribbled that in there, or do you think it actually means something?"
Michael spun the book on the table so that the scribble on the inside cover was fixed on the left, as though he were about to start reading it. "Or it might simply mean to begin reading here. There is no discernable difference from the front to the back, not real qualities save this scribble and that insignia." He gestured to the eye scratched just below the lettering. "Perhaps if at one time there was any writing in it, this is were it would begin."
Robin nodded steadily still hovering over him as though the whole case had suddenly interested her.
He flipped the next page, and felt his heart skip a beat, he had been holding the book upside down while he flipped it, and what he had taken for smears or marks of wear and tear, he could see were the almost completely vanished lettering, so faint on the page, that they were hardly able to be discerned. But Michael's keen eyes scanned them a few times, again recognizing the Latin in them. More then half of what was written was thoroughly scrubbed away, but he could just manage to a read a few words.
He opened a drawer in his desk grouping around for a pencil madly. Robin watching him with a genuine curiosity, as he pulled one out, followed by a small note pad. His hand flew across the paper fluidly, reading off each word with utmost care.
"Pro nos collector non obviam viscus quod cruor , tamen obviam principalities , obviam vox , obviam satraps of obscurum illae universitas , obviam phasmatis nequitia in altus locus. Quare take unto vos universitas loricatus of Deus , ut ye may polleo ut subsisto in malum dies , quod having perfectus totus , subsisto. Sic est cado illae universitas ut tunc." He whispered as he wrote with a feverish speed. "It has been years since I took Latin." he paused, frowning. "Robin, can you pull me up a computer?"
Robin nodded hurrying off to the computer safes and unlocking one, pulling out a thin laptop. And returning to him, starting it up even as she walked. "Do you recognized anything at all?" She asked breathlessly placing the computer down on the table, and seeming all at once excited.
"Wait...." Michael said holding up a finger slightly, straitening his horn-rimmed glasses and smoothing back his dark hair as he glared in frustration down at the page. "For we wrestle not... Armor of God... high places..." he says faintly his grey gaze skimming across a sea of unfamiliar words. "Latin is nearly impossible to translate perfectly because words can mean many different things and only one translation on the computer is possible."
Robin straitened slowly repeating the words he had just spoken, with a light sparking into her eyes. "I know this... I know this..." she says her voice heightening with excitement. "I read this passage many times."
Michael swallowed and lifted his head, giving her an astounded yet fascinated look. Now that they were both speaking books and history, the two friends seemed to share the same enthusiasm.
"Passage? It's from the Bible?"
She nodded, running her fingers through her previously windblown hair. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, hold your ground...Ephesians 6:12-13."
Michael sprang to his feet. "Brilliant!" he said suppressing a triumphant laugh. "I recall that passage now too, though I would have not remembered it so flawlessly. Brilliant, Robin!"
No sooner had he spoken, when he realized that a small group of people were now hovering in front of his desk seeming generally alarmed.
"Excuse me... we can't get into our meeting room because you haven't unlocked it yet... sorry to interrupt." one of the women said apologetically.
Michael blinked once, his mind still elsewhere, still trying to figure out why they were standing there. To cover up the awkward moment, Robin raised a finger.
"Absolutely, I'll assist you in that immediately... right away..." she looks back at Michael. "Be right back."
Michael nodded, and sat back down again, trying to retain his excitement. It was almost overwhelming. He paged gently through the book again, studying each smudge with a trained scrutiny. Whatever story this book had to tell, he unearth it.
That day past quicker then most. The majority of his hours spent pouring over the book so hesitant to reveal to him it's origins and past. He did however discover a few dates scrawled in one of the center pages. There were written in a deep stain, an ink almost red. Something about it unnerved him and he took a break for a few hours to walk to the café and listen to some "Mozart"
He watched the hours tick by, every once in a while he would look up from what he was doing at the clock, propped at his desk. At eight that evening Robin was shutting off the computers and most of the staff were hurrying home to catch their favorite television programs.
"If you bring that home, you'll be up till opening time tomorrow. You should leave the book here, and try and get some rest..." Robin said seriously turning out the lights with a few flicks of the switches. "Remember, your driving me home. I haven't a ride, and I don't want to bicycle in the dark."
Michael didn't agree at first seeming hesitant. He flipped the book over in his hands biting his lip. "You don't think, Samantha will move it if she gets in early tomorrow do you?"
Robin shook her head. "Not if you hide it in your desk." he nodded smiling faintly, but as she turned away, he slipped the book into his jacket.
"Right well then. Best be off. We're the last ones out... as usual."
It was another five minutes before they were pulling out of the empty parking lot, the radio throbbing a symphony, the air conditioning humming softly. "Dunkin Donuts for a coffee?" Michael asked, already knowing her reaction but trying to get his mind off the book.
"My kitchen, for a ginger-ale?"
"Yuck."
"Don't be so stubborn. If one drop of coffee spills, you'll stain your precious books."
"So I simply don't spill it."
She sighs with exasperation and fell silent. Michael takes a sharp left a few blocks away from her apartment. "Well. Good night, I guess I'll see you tomorrow, as usual..." Robin said with a deep sigh.
The pulled up in front of her complex, the car coming to a steady halt. "Likewise." Michael said in a distracted tone, his expression distant. She gave him a briefly look and kicked open the passenger side door stepping out onto the sidewalk. She bade him one last goodnight before heading up the brick walkway leading to the apartment complex.
Michael watched her leave, his thoughts trailing back to the book and the ominous dates scrawled across it's innermost pages. He sighed deeply and decided it best to drive home.
Ten minutes later, he was pulling the keys out of the ignition, getting out of the car. Crickets were chirping in the grass by the back steps and he glimpsed the big gray cat, Vintage, as they called him, scampering around behind the garbage cans. He felt for his keys deep inside his brown duster and retrieved them with a jingle as he climbed the back stairs. He didn't bother to knock knowing his mother was probably fast asleep and not wanting to alert Eleanore into barking.
He pushed open the door quietly and slid in, almost instantaneously something knee height and fuzzy scrambled across the slippery floor of the kitchen and greeted him, tail wagging.
"Hey there Eleanore." he says with a slight smile patting her on the head and stepping over her and into the small living room. His mother had left dishes on the coffee table in front of the TV. Perhaps to remind him that she was still mad at him. He shook his head leaving the dishes untouched and turning on the lamp just above his desk.
Eleanore dashed all around him her nose pressed to his shoes
"You know... Eleanore, it's not as though I have been anywhere other than the same Library I have been coming home from for two years." he says stroking her soft gray fur and pulling the small book from his duster.
Eleanore raised her head curiously taking a whiff at the book, then she did the most unexpected thing. She took a step back, her tail lowering tucking under, till it touched her underbelly. He watched her for a moment genuinely alarmed, then her lips peeled back to reveal sharp white canines, and a growl resonated from deep within her throat.
"What is it girl?" he picked up the book, and she stepped back again continuing to growl. "Stop it... it's just a book. See it's not going to hurt you..." she ran then, she flat out ran scampering from the room and down the dark hall. He sat there looking after her for a moment then glancing back at the book.
"Yeah you and the rest of the world, Eleanore." he scanned the burn marks and gaping slashes, then set the book on the desk and began to page through it. He knew which page he was going to though. He opened the book to the mysterious dates and bent over them, straitening his glasses.
There was something on the page that he had not noted before however, a deep red stain blotting through from the other side. He wondered how he could have possibly missed that. Carefully, he overturned the paper. It was a paragraph written in the same deep ink used on the dates.
"Where... did you come from?"
He bent nearer, this writing however, was not in Latin.
"The Twenty-third of the fourth month of this year, if He knows when a single sparrow falls, imagine how much more, when we fall. We shall see three lives fall from air, wingless to water. The fire shall take them first, the water claim them after."
Michael blinked once then reread the passage. "What?" he flipped the page back to the dates then to the passage again. "Okay that makes no sense, first of all where did that come from, second of all, which date?"
Why did that passage touch him so? Why did he suddenly feel uneasy. He got up quickly feeling slightly dizzy and not sure why. He moved to the fridge to retrieve a bottle of "Deer Park" hoping to calm himself down.
"Hey Eleanore, where did you run off to?" he called trying to keep his voice lowered so that he wouldn't wake his mother. He turned from the fridge unscrewing the top of the water bottle. The dog lay in the hall, head strait forward on her stiffened neck, her bright eyes alertly poised in the direction of the book. She was sniffing loudly.
"That's scary." Michael shook his head as he walked by her and back to the book. "This year? Huh?"
He picked the book up briefly, turning it over and running his fingers over its surface. "Well of course its this year. Why wouldn't it be?" he felt slightly disgruntled about something and couldn't put his finger on what. He tipped the book back onto his desk. "Robin had better get her stupid car going. I don't want to have to drive extra out of my way tomorrow." he says glaring at his dog again. "And don't be a dork, you stupid dog, it's just a book."
he gave it a long look, considering just heading off to bed, like Robin had suggested. He took another gulp of water continuing to survey the little black book. Then he shrugged and took his seat by the desk.
"What's the harm in a few more hours?"
Eleanore growled softly from the darkened hall.
*********
The phone was ringing.
It pierced through the apartment with a shrill sound that made Eleanore jump from her hiding spot under the table.
"Mike... the phone!" Called his mother.
Michael was almost motionless staring down at the pages as though he were reading. Six empty mugs of coffee were stacked on the desk before him.
"Mike!" His mom yelled again, she was stomping down the hall now, her slippered feet heavy on the solid wood. She had a towel wrapped around her head as she had just gotten out of the shower. She had climbed right back into her pajamas, as was her habit.
She picked up the still trilling phone and raised it to her ear. "Hang on Ms. Squire, I'll get him."
he covered the speaker with one hand. "Michael T. Sterling! Wake up! Robin is on the phone!" Her dark eyes fell to the stacked mugs on the table. "Oh my... I just washed the dishes before I got in the shower! Your making a mess, get over here."
Michael seemed to be roused, but only just, he looked up wearily from his task at her. "Mom, It's my apartment."
"Well I am living here for now!"
"Mom, it's six mugs... I'll wash them."
"You'll leave them for me like you always do, get over here and answer the phone."
Michael pushed away from his desk flying to his feet sending Eleanore scampering. He stormed over to the counter and snatched the phone away from her. He slammed it down on the receiver hard. "Look we need to talk."
His mother stared at him flabbergasted her eyes traveling from the phone back to him. "What about now?"
"Stop ordering me around! All you ever do is tell me what to do in my own house! Heck, I am even reluctant to come home! I ask the people at work not to call here so that you don't answer the phone! So they don't have to find out what kind of mother I have!" He snapped picking the phone up again and storming away, leaving her standing there, he dialed the library at feverish speed.
"Michael? What on earth happened?" Came the voice on the other side of the receiver. "Was that your mother? I..."
"What do you want, I'm busy." he said throwing himself down in the chair behind his desk again.
"Ummm, do you know what time it is?"
Michael swung in his chair glancing at the clock, and he felt his heart skip a beat. "Ten-o-clock?"
"What's not right about that picture, Michael? Did you remember you were supposed to be in by eight."
"Of course I did." Michael snapped heatedly realizing his mistake and feeling a tinge of guilt threaten to rise within him. "You think I am stupid or something?"
"You took that book home didn't you?" she asked and before he could answer she hung up the phone.
He leapt out of the chair gathering up the book hastily and charging for the door. "See you later!" he snapped to his mother quickly as he half flew by.
He was already down the stairs of his apartment and halfway to the car before he had taken a second breath. He pulled the door open and leapt in. How could he have gotten so sidetracked? How could he have forgotten about work?
By the time he sped his way through two red lights and pulled into the parking lot of the Borden town library, he had trouble finding a parking space. He almost dented the "Ford Focus" he had pulled in next to as he flung open the drivers door.
He pulled open the door to the library and doubled up catching his breath. Robin Squire was there, as though she had been waiting for him. Her arms folded neatly over her chests her expression more concerned then angry.
"Michael! What on earth is going on?" her eyes fell on the book in his right hand. "What happened?"
"I have NO idea!" he says gulping for air straitening his glasses, and straitening. "I'm... I'm sorry I snapped at you on the phone. I don't know what got into me."
"It's alright." Robin nodded. "You sounded like you had been up all night long. Judging by the way you turned up with that book today, you probably were. Michael, come to your sense, it's pretty much blank."
"No!" he says excitedly almost tripping over his untied shoe lace. "It's not blank. I found something!"
Robin watched him cautiously then nodded. "Alright. Then show me." She jerked her head at the back desk, where it was a good deal quieter then usual.
The two of them made for the back desk Michael trying to steady his breathing. "I'm sure you heard of the shuttle." Robin said quietly as they reached the desk, and Michael flipped open the book.
"No I didn't." he murmured leaning near to the pages and peeling them away carefully.
Columbia34 went down."
Michael froze halfway through turning a page, glancing quickly up at her. "What? Oh my gosh, when did this happen?"
"While you were at your apartment staring at that forsaken thing."
"How many Astronauts?" he asks as he pulled the last page back to reveal the now blank page where only last night he had seen the prophecy in writing.
"Three. The pace Shuttle landed in the Pacific, they have been cleaning the wreckage all morning."
He felt his heart skip a beat, maybe more. "Three Astronauts?"
She nodded somberly.
"You'll never believe this." he says straitening and turning to her. "I just read about that last night."
She shot him a skeptical look. "You read about it?"
"Yes..." he prodded the book gently. "In there. I swear, it was written in there, right on this page. It told me about the incident. It said three people were going to fall out of the air and land in the water. What is today's date?"
"April 23, 2008. Wait, back up. I don't understand. You read this in the book?"
"I did. I promise you as crazy as it sounds it's true!" he glances back down at the book then collapses into the chair. "It was in there. It didn't say the year. It said the date. The Twenty-Third of the fourth month of this year."
Robin bit her bottom lip thinking. "Are you sure you were awake? You had an awfully long day yesterday. Are you positive that you didn't mistake it for something else? Because that's either a miraculous prophecy, or a coincidence."
"Come on. It was there in the book. How could a book possible know when something like that was going to happen?"
***********************
hursday was wet with rain. The drops pattered on the window pane just outside his living room window. The book, lay, closed on his desk. Robin had a mug of coffee in her hand and she was curled up on the couch, her eyes glued to the Tv screen occasionally smiling at some strange joke the main character made.
Michael was watching the rain. "Do you think we could have done something?" He asked quietly and softly his hazel gaze far off, past the sheets of silver rain in the darkness of thought.
"No." Robin said taking a small sip from her mug. "We can't do anything about it. A shooting in somewhere in South Carolina is not something we can fix." She turned and saw him gazing forlornly out the window.
Eleanore let out a small woof her paws twitching ever so slightly, lost in dreams.
"I feel we should have been able to do something."
Robin could tell that Michael would dwell long and hard on this one, no matter what she said. "It's not for us to decide who lives and who dies. No one would have believed us. That's why we aren't supposed to know these things."
"What about the school bus in New York? Five hit and run accidents? What about them? They aren't so far away."
Robin set her mug down on the coffee table and frowned. "Look, Michael. People aren't supposed to know what tragedies will and won't happen. The term tragedy doesn't even have meaning to the people who leave this world. Only to the people who were left behind. You an I can't mourn for half a week about things we never had any power over. If I knew The Titanic was going to sink... what was I going to do? Stand up on a podium and claim that the unsinkable ship would drag over 2,000 people to their deaths? People would have laughed to till they learned."
"That was a long time ago though." Michael sighed resting his chin on his arm, taking off his glasses and setting them on his desk.
"Exactly, Michael." she agreed shifting slightly on the couch. "It was a LONG time ago. It's history we can't do anything about it. We aren't God. We don't stop the rain."
"But if there is a purpose for everything we do, why did that book fall into my hands, unless God intended me to do something with it." He argued.
"Did it occur to you, that God might not have wanted you to use it. Maybe he planned you do something else with it."
Michael ran his fingers over the tattered book. Over the slash marks over the scorched spine, and broken binding. "Why?"
"Well...." Robin began but he interrupted her. "Why?" he asked again suddenly sitting up abruptly and unfolding his glasses slipping them back on. "Why would anyone want to rip a book of prophecy apart?"
"You know... just because it's an oracle in paper doesn't mean it's perfect."
He held up a finger to her. "No... your right. It isn't perfect. Just a book only a book. What did we think of it when we first discovered it's secret?"
Robin swallowed as Eleanore raised her head groggily. "We thought it was impressive. We thought it was miraculous."
"Exactly!" Michael said slamming his fist down on the desk causing the pencils in the jar to rattle loudly. "Why would we think it's a miracle? Why would we think that?"
"Well obviously because it tells the future. Things that will and do happen."
"What other book does that?"
"Huh?"
Michael smiles ever so slightly, as though he had reached a conclusion that he had intended to reach for days. "What is the only other book that we consider Miraculous? That speaks of things that did and will happen? That tells us how we live? That tells us how we die?" He stands up abruptly.
"The Bible."
"What was the first thing that it quoted, in Latin?"
"Ephesians 6:12-13." Robin stated straitening, fumbling for the tv remote turning off the monitor as Michael began to pace.
"What book do we trust most of all, and do we not lower our walls to anything that coincides our beliefs? Do we not feel a little safer if we should hear something that we firmly trust in?"
"I'm not sure where you are going with all this." Robin admitted after a few moments of Michael starring her down expectantly.
"It's a false prophet."
"Your suggesting that it purposefully misled us into believing that it was in the an equal or related to the Bible."
"So." Robin said getting up slowly catching on now. "So the book, is posing as evil? Okay I know we discussed this before. How can a book behave like that? Trick us into thinking. It's just a book. Yet the writing fade and clear over it as though it were speaking to us."
"A miracle..." Michael nodded picking up the shabby little book. "But just because it's a miracle, doesn't mean it's a Heavenly one. This book would eat us from the inside out I know I felt it. That night when I was late for work, it was as though it had worked it's way inside me. I argued with my mother. I said things I didn't mean."
"I understand now. Those marks on it, those attempts at incineration and destruction. There were. Whoever they were tried to be rid of it. Tried to make sure no one else would read it again."
"So all those burns and other stains are from someone who tried to tear the book apart to spare anyone else reading it and being drawn into this despair?"
Michael nodded. "And the book yet remains."
Robin and Michael looked at each other. They looked at one another for a very long time, neither saying anything but both reading the other's expressions. "We have to destroy it." Robin exclaimed looking towards the book he held in his hand. "We have to destroy it."
His mother's slippers could be heard, pattering down the hall again, Eleanore groaned and stood up shaking out her grey shaggy coat.
"Alright, do you have your tools here?" Robin said quickly almost charging across the room to his desk, flinging it open and rummaging around from his exacto knife. "You know what.... you have to come to my place sometime and see what a mess it is."
Michael flipped open the book. "I'll make a note of that. Open the right drawer, under the folders."
"I see it." she said pulling out the blade which actually looked like a slender silver pen. "She handed it to him. "There... you take that cursed thing and you cut it to pieces. No one else could do it. You know the workings of a book, you know what binding to cut so that it all falls apart."
Michael reached for the knife in agreement, and no sooner had he taken it, when the book dropped from his hand and landed hard on the floor. For a moment he thought it was an accident, then he felt the slight burn marks from where the book had slid forcefully from his grasp.
Robin jumped backwards at the heavy thud for such a small book and Eleanore scampered from the room, tail tucked between her legs.
"Ow." Michael rubbed his hands on the front of his shirt, and bent down picking it up again. "I don't think so." he says collapsing back into his desk chair and slapping the book down on it's hard surface. He took the knife in his right hand and flipped the book open placing it, open, pages faced downwards, on the desk. He went to work on the first thread of binding. He cut the first part of the books life away. It shuttered, in fact the whole desk rattled.
Robin's hand covered her mouth as they both bent over the book, taking it apart, the book helpless to resist. Michael got the distinct feeling that if the book were granted a voice it might have been screaming.
He removes the first few pages from it's binding, pulling it away from the rest. Bit by bit he dissected the book, piece by piece. With every part removed the book seemed to shrink. As he cut away the spine, a dark black fluid stained the tip of the blade. For a moment he drew back.
He quickly finished his work before he could actually consider what that liquid really was.
The book was just a tired old cover, it's pages removes from it. It sat, just pressed paper, parchment, and string.
"We need to start the fire..." Michael managed as he stared long and hard at the tiny stack of paper on his desk. "We have to burn it."
Even in death Michael felt the book was trapped in an ever silent scream. The pages curled and smoked before him, folding on itself slowly and steadily. He threw the front cover in next, once sure the pages were mostly beyond use. He leaned down to pick up the spine, when a paper brushed his hand.
He looked down at it long and hard for a moment, recognizing it as another page. He made to crumple it but something caught his eye. He paused pulling it up to eye level as Robin threw in the back cover and the string binding.
"360 days will come and go and the seasons shall change thrice and eight. Then in the changing of the leaves on the first rest day of the eleventh month, your closest friend will..."
"Will what?" the page was turn prohibiting further reading.
Robin turned and starred at him. "Will what?" she asks, leaning forward interested.
He crumples it quickly, throwing it to the flames before she could register what it said. "It doesn't matter... it was just... that devilish thing wanted to have the last word... that's all."
they both watched the letter burn, the words charred away forever.
They must have sat there fore another hour, neither saying a word, sitting and watching the flames devour every last piece of the book that had become their introduction to tragedy
"What did it say?" she asks finally breaking the silence her voice low and thoughtful.
Michael swallowed hard. "I'm not sure what it meant..." he reaches over and takes her hand squeezing it lightly. "I think it just wanted to let me know... that it had one more trick... one more year to ruin..."
She didn't smile watching him cautiously. "Not about you? Or me is it?" she asked sharply. She was always to quick on the uptake.
"Maybe... but even if it was.... we have to remember what you told me..."
She swallowed and looked away hard.
"We aren't God. We weren't meant to stop the rain."